


shades of happiness

by lazywriter7



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Further spoiler tags in fic notes, Gen, Infinity Gems, M/M, Natasha Romanov Feels, Not A Fix-It But a Right-It, POV Steve Rogers, Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 09:30:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18617872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: Part of the journey is the end.Steve Rogers considers his many possible endings, and chooses one.





	shades of happiness

**Author's Note:**

> Let me preface this by saying that this fic is not how I would prefer the current MCU to wrap up - I've already written 20k of that in [Gather Ye Rosebuds](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14185119), of people we love leading happy, fulfilled lives and growing old together. This is me taking what was given to us in Endgame, and trying to reconcile with that. If you disagree, or have a different vision - that's amazing and I respect it and will probably also agree with you, but this idea is what I'm choosing to write out, so please don't jump down my throat, k?
> 
> If you haven't seen the tags already: _spoilers for Endgame_ . Don't read if you haven't watched the movie. There are quotes from the movie, probably not completely accurate as I'm going off a one-time watch. This is also your warning for **major character death**.

It’s always been the shade that caught his eye the quickest.

In a set of pastels, blocky and chalky-soft and colour staining on his fingertips – always the pop of red towards the end that his gaze drifted to, where it lingered. The colour that could change the very way you looked at things – like when sunrise lit the tenements of Brooklyn in rose-gold-cinnabar, gleaming off bicycle pedals that used to look dusty and camouflaging the cracks in sour-cream building walls, clothes left over on the lines at night flapping gently in the wind – like filtering it all through this shade could alter reality itself.

( _Reality, that makes one of six_ –)

Steve had a weakness for it, for red. Any time one of his paintings looked a touch too dull, like the colours had been leached of their potency, like everything was too drab, too still ( _too dead)_ , his brush strayed towards the red tube of paint. A dab here and a highlight there, and it was like the painting became a new creature – vivid and kinetic, the richness of the hue enhancing the brighter shades of yellow and orange, adding depth into the darkness of browns and blacks. It was always on his palette, he couldn’t imagine picturing a world without…

“Steve.”

He shook with it, the startlement. He blinked his eyes. Peggy smiled at him from across the diner booth, chestnut-hair shining in the light and victory suit as perfectly pressed as when he’d first met her. “You were gone there, for a while.”

“I was.” Steve said, and there was something about that that wasn’t quite right. Spoken too lightly, frivolous and easy. Lacking the import that words like that deserved.

But Peggy seemed to pay that no note and only smiled wider. Steve was braced for the breathstopping, jawbreaking clench of longing the sight brought – the corners of her quirked lips, the dip of her lower lip where the skin always seemed to be chapped and flaking. The carmine slash of her lipstick.

_Red._

“Nice place, isn’t it.” Peggy tilted her chin, dark eyes flitting over the light fixtures and checkered décor.

_It’s very seventies_ , Steve wanted to say – the foreignness of the thought prickled at him. It was… it was out of place, in this picture-perfect scene, out of time, because he’d never have known to have the thought if not for pop-culture and watching movies about the seventies in the futu–

So something else escaped his tongue instead. “Sometimes, I’d think about if I was just imagining it too… too sunny. Too bright. What would’ve happened if I’d never gone down in the ice.”

A shining image, through rose-tinted glasses. There was something about that too, which rattled at the shadowy edges of his mind; tinted glasses, tinted glasses and dark eyes–

( _Dark eyes, bare for the taking. “Liar.”)_

“Was the end of war. Couldn’t have been all sunshine and roses.” And for all of his heartache, he’d gotten to skip that part, hadn’t he? Hadn’t had to live with the aftermath. Bombed out streets, diners that were looking a lot emptier, hollow smiles and haunted eyes, empty chairs at the kitchen table.

Except he did live with it, just not at that particular time. Steve cleared his throat, dry to the bone, something like ash lingering at the back of his tongue. “I had to… had to carry on, for five years after. At times, it was harder than the ice.”

But Peggy only smiled on, uncharacteristic, shine of white teeth like something lacquered over. “Have some water, dear, you sound parched.”

The light seeping through the windows caught in his eyes, near-blinding. Steve raised a hand to shield them – was the sun setting? “Must’ve been hard for you to go through that all alone, after the war. Don’t know how you managed it.”

When he’d blinked the spots out of his eyes, the diner seemed faded – though still bathed in coloured light. Peggy had stopped smiling, though her eyes were still kind. “I wasn’t alone.”

_Of course_. For all that it had gotten dimmer, the world also seemed clearer at the edges. Like a hazy picture beginning to resolve, showing all its grainy details, cracks in the wall. Steve breathed in the stillness, breathed in the dust. “How’re the husband and kids, Peg?”

Peggy blinked, dark lashes batting through the stillness. She wasn’t wearing a ring. “Steve, I don’t know what you’re–

No, the sun wasn’t setting. But the dimmed light had gone awfully red, casting shadows across Peggy’s cheekbones, creeping across the diner table that was somehow too solid and yet not enough under Steve’s numb fingers. “Peg.”

“They’re.” Peggy hitched a breath. Cast in unearthly scarlet or no, she still looked like Steve’s best dream. “It hasn’t happened yet, but… they’ll be. They’re.. doing really well.”

Behind her glossy locks, Steve could see the diner fracturing – jagged shards of light cleaving through the vinyl booths, checkered floor, white tiling on the counters. His breath was shaking along with it, sucked clean out of his chest like an asthma attack of old, fingers digging into the table– “I never stopped loving you.”

“Me neither, darling.” The words sounded thick in her throat, but Peggy wasn’t crying. She leaned forward, cupped her warm palms over his whitening fingers, “Always.”

Then why. Why did they have to, why couldn’t this be–

_(“I need **ed** you. You said ‘together’, and_– _”)_

 “You’ve worked so hard. Been… unmeasurably brave, done so much.” Peggy’s eyes glistened with the warmth of a thousand setting suns. “I couldn’t be prouder.”

“I could… I could do it again. Here.” Work at it, at belonging to this time again. It couldn’t hurt as much, couldn’t claw at his throat with the hollowness of it more than the first go around. “With you.”

“Oh, but sweetheart.” Peggy raised soft fingers, leaned enough to ghost them over the back of Steve’s neck, catching at the flyway strands of a haircut she’d never gotten to see. “You’ve already done your time someplace else.”

The light blazed, and the world winked out.

 

~

 

The air pumped through his chest, hard and heavy, throat dry with gasping. His hands were braced on his thighs, view obscured to the gap between them – sweat-slick fringe whipping in his eyes when he bent over and tried to regain his breath.

“Sloppy, sloppy.” A voice teased – Steve jerked his head upright and saw red.

Not the long, straightened sheet of locks he’d gotten used to during D.C.; not even the braid she’d started putting her hair in in the past five years when her roots started growing out. No, Natasha’s hair was scarlet, violently red – and done in the short bob he’d grown to know when they’d first met, and when they trained the Avengers at the compound together.

Which was where they were now, maybe – there were mats under their feet and the training equipment around them looked halfway familiar; somewhere in between what had been in the SHIELD barracks and the Avengers facility gym. On the wall behind, off to the corner of his vision: the edge of a logo set into the plaster gleamed metallic under the afternoon light.

_(“That’s what we do, right? The A-vengers? We lost, we_ –”

“You giving up on the fight, Rogers?” Natasha stretched her hands above her head, jet black leather-and-Kevlar creaking with the motion; rolled the joints in her neck, hair clinging to sweaty skin. “Misery of existence getting you down?”

It was a sharp, sharp jab – Steve heaved a breath and laughed with it, laughed till his eyes were faintly blurring and his chest hurt. Straightened up, meeting twinkling green eyes that he’d thought once upon a time, were cold and unreadable. “You’re not getting off that easy, Romanov.”

“You sure?” Natasha mocked, and the affection of it was raw salt and soothing balm all at once. “You’ve been looking pretty bummed lately. Maybe you should go back to bed, rest those old, creaky joints.”

Steve’s feet were moving – he’d fallen into the dance, the pattern, unaware of even making the first step, the two of them circling each other around the ring. How many times had they done this? He should’ve… he should’ve kept count.

“It’s always the same with you millennials. Life is hard, it always is.” Steve’s gloves creaked as he flexed his fingers, boots gleaming cherry red just at the edge of his sight. The old uniform – now that was a different touch. “Don’t know about you, but I’ve got plenty in my life to get outta bed for.”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard this one before.” Natasha didn’t roll her eyes, the gesture far too pedestrian for her – and Steve knew that, now and during the course of… ten? Ten years. “The future isn’t really that bad, the internet is such a useful resource, do you know how dangerous polio used to be–”

Oh, but it was far more nuanced than that. In moments, that yawned long and crushingly heavy, the future seemed nothing more than a wasteland. And yet, here was a friend grinning at him from across the ring, and his breath shivered in his chest with the realisation, a truth sitting in his chest too simple to ignore – “I’ve got more than that.”

_(“You trust me, right?”)_

Natasha stilled. Behind the shield of banter, the fond, biting grin – Steve could see now that her eyes were too bright. Gleaming with a layer of something liquid and unspilled, eyes reddening – streaks crawling in from the corners, overwhelming the whites. “Yeah?”

“Chatting with Mr. Patel at the bodega three miles away. Helping Wanda control her powers.” It was like feeling the dark give way, lightness stealing in – till his vision was wrecked with it, till keeping his eyes closed was no longer an option. “Morning runs with Sam. Sparring with you.”

Natasha’s smile settled into the crinkles of her eyes, a colourless drop leaking out the side and vanishing into the curve of her cheek. Her voice was ever-so-slightly hoarse, and in that moment more tempting than any Black Widow act she’d ever put on. “You can keep this, if you want. Keep all of this.”

The Avengers logo blazed on the wall behind her head, the corner of the A obscured by her curls. It felt, for a second, that his knees might give way after all.

Steve stayed standing. “You can’t.”

There was something trickling down from Natasha’s temple – a thin line of scarlet mingling with the trail of tears. He didn’t know how close to the truth it was. He’d never gotten to see the bod– he’d never gotten to see her go. His voice cracked with the thought, a cleaving strike right down the middle, “I can’t do this without you.”

“Steve.” There was a gentleness about her, a sense of care he’d never deserved. “I did what I had to so you _could_.”

“Is that…” No matter how many times he cleared his throat, the rawness wouldn’t subside. An open wound, every word flecked with the pain of it, “Is that why you…”

“You already know why.” Did he? The nose of the _Valkyrie_ , heading straight for the Arctic shelf. Natasha’s mouth curled slightly, an affectionate smirk as if she could read his mind. “Serves you right for setting such a good example, hmm?”

“Besides, I had a job.” She said the words like she said so much else, point blank and matter-of-fact – because that was who she was. Not the masks, or the deception, or even the fights. She was duty, and a commitment to it unflinchingly made. “And a debt to repay.”

A debt to repay. The words struck something, grasped for something – past the skin of his chest and aching muscle, through the defences of his ribs and right down to his unenhanced, beating heart.

_(Not red this time, no. Hearts were blue, blue and white like the hottest part of a flame; heat and weight slammed down into his palm, metal burning a circle into the skin._

_“Liar.”_

_Burning regret, and a debt that couldn’t be cast away.)_

Something slipped into his hand, warm fingers working their way into his own gaps. Steve squeezed against the pressure, breath escaping just a fraction more lightly. “Did it hurt when you went down?”

“No.” Natasha said simply, and the press of her hand against his was not a lie. Reddened as they were, her eyes still looked peaceful. “It was nice. Like a warmth in my chest, of… getting to throw aside all that my life had been used for, and choosing what it was going to mean.”

_It means everything. A hero, when it counted the most for everyone. A friend, when it counted the most for me._

“It didn’t feel like that for me, the ice.” The world was hazing around them again, soft and crimson. His fingers curled in harder, held on tighter. “I knew what I was doing was right, but… it didn’t feel like that.”

“Well then.” Natasha tilted her head one last time, light gleaming off the devastating line of her jaw, eyes teasing like he’d remember her best. “What’re you waiting for?”

A breath, brushing past the stillness. Like conviction finally emerging again, settling into its long-worn shoes.

The world blazed bright. Steve let go.

 

~

 

When Steve came back to himself, the universe was in stasis.

It felt like he could see all of it, spanning wide, even though his eyes were only confined to this place, this instant. This battlefield, sprawling on the grounds of a compound he’d once called home.

It was all silent, all still. Ash caught in mid-air, immobile. Weapons thrown and not yet landed. Snarls on unmoving faces, bodies contorted into the fight, friends and enemies all stretching around about him. Frozen in time, and Steve a man out of it.

Something glimmered at the corner of his vision – an exhale fleeted from his lips, a solitary breath among thousands that had been paused midway. The Time Stone shone dully among the gaps of his fingers. But it was only a spark of green amidst a sea of red; the Reality Gem blazing next to it, eye-searing.

Steve could not move his fingers. They twitched a little, but stayed firmly wrapped around, entwined through the scratched-up, faded metal fingers of an Iron Man gauntlet.

Steve lifted his chin, and stared at Tony’s face, frozen inches away from his.

_(It had been a split-second decision. Lying on his back, holding a broken shield, tasting the blood through his teeth; catching a glimpse of Tony’s face through the debris, as he looked at someone out of view – at Strange, maybe._

_Catching a glimpse of that resolution stealing over his face, grim and ruinously beautiful. Watching the tussle between him and the Mad Titan, watching as Tony Stark outsmarted and outgritted a foe yet again._

_“I…am…”_

_Steve’s fingers twitched. A magnetic pull, a phantom sensation of lifting something that had never felt this light before._

_Mjolnir plowed through the air, smashing into gold and titanium-alloy. Tony’s face contorted in agony, breath stuttering – but it served the purpose, the weight of the hammer pulling him forward several, crucial inches. Steve could feel the dirt under his fingernails, the watery shake of his arms as he pulled himself up one last time – dragged his knees over the ground to close the gap. Reached out, and this time he wasn’t too far away. This time, he caught the hand and held it tight._

Please _, he thought, fingers clammy against warm metal, Tony’s eyes wide and so close and ash dusty over those lashes,_ please, _as his skin brushed against the warmth of the gems, scorching points of contact._

Please _, as the world froze and blazed red, and reality splintered with possibilities in his mind.)_

 

That had been a second ago.

“Thank you.” He whispered, sound barely escaping the ash, the hoarseness, the throttling gratitude. The Reality Gem shone on like a constant, Time a quiet counterpoint to the side.

He had the time now, so he took it. Several selfish seconds, of staring at the brown eyes so inescapably close to his, the ones that had spat contempt at him and offered a home to him and widened in betrayal at his actions. Steve memorised it all, like a painting he’d never be able to put to page – the blood-crusted mess of Tony’s hair, the silver in his eyebrows, the gaunt hollows of his cheeks, the resolute tilt of his chin. The brightness of him, the tenacity, the inability to walk away – like red still lingering in the sky long after the sun had gone down.

Steve’s breath felt thick in his throat, blood and air all congealed to one. With the hand not trapped in the gauntlet, burning over the Stones – he brushed his knuckles over the warm, hard gristle of Tony’s jaw. A stolen touch, the last thing Steve would ever take from him again.

_(“I will miss you Tony.”)_

“Please.” Reality flickered around them. The Gem glowed, nanites stirring under Steve’s palm, like the faintest tickle, a warm breath huffed over skin. They peeled out in layers, withdrawing from Tony’s ashy skin and flowing over Steve’s hand – welcoming streams that trailed static electricity till they encased him from wrist to fingertip.

The Stones followed, five throbbing points settling below his knuckles. They still felt lighter than the phantom weight of an arc reactor, chest-warm and leaden in his palm.

Steve’s was a life mired with regrets. But in this, insular instant – the only thing he regretted was having to let go of Tony’s bare hand.

One snap, and the world came back to life.

 

 

It was like feeling his atoms implode, the burn beginning from the tips of his fingers and scoring past muscle, sinew, nerve – the blood in his veins on fire, working up his arm and charring everything in its path. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, ground rushing up to hit his spine–

“What. What the fuck, no, no, fuck, no, _Steve_ –”

Something gurgled at the back of his throat. Steve stared up at the sky, unseeing – until his vision was filled with something too familiar, hair and face and eyes looking down, so deeply embedded into his psyche that he couldn’t not recognise–

“T..Tony.” There was warmth at the back of his neck, warmth separate from the burn carving through the right side of his chest. Like someone was clasping his neck, bracing it – like Steve’s stolen touch did not matter, because Tony would always give everything freely away.

“I had it, I had him, why would, Steve, _Steve_ –”

Parts of Steve could still feel the serum kicking away, fighting desperately in its last stretches – _I can do this all… I can do this_ –

“Tony, I…I am so sorry.”

Tony’s face stared down, lips clamped down tight like his teeth were biting through the skin on the inside. There were streaks of shining moisture on his cheeks, clear tracks running down the grime. His voice rang like iron. “No. No. Not good enough, Rogers. I don’t accept this, I can’t–”

“What’s her name.” Steve whispered it on a rasping breath, and Tony’s voice broke off. “Your… daughter. Tell me her name.”

“Morgan.” More liquid, welling up at the edges of those eyes, where the laugh lines usually sat – Steve ached to reach up and brush them away.

“Thought.” The next words were unbearably hard to get out, the burn flickering at the hollow of his throat. Steve struggled through it, single-minded, like every asthma attack, every bully’s fist, every bullet and hit that had ever threatened to keep him down and never succeeded. “Thought tha… that was a… fella’s name.”

“We’re rich and eccentric, it works out.” The words flitted out heedlessly, like Tony’s lips were moving and he didn’t particularly care what came out.

_We._ Once upon a time, that might’ve rung hollow in Steve’s chest, a pang of longing. Now it nestled there, warm and soothing and protected from the burn.

“Steve.” Something hit Steve’s cracked lips, tingling there – if he flicked his tongue out, he might taste water and salt. “You can’t give up like this.”

_But I’m not._ This wasn’t like losing faith, like walking away in the middle of the journey. This was finally staggering to the summit, and seeing your destination over the horizon. This was adding that final fleck of paint, that dab of red, to make the picture all worth it.

The hold shifted from Steve’s neck to the back of shoulders that were almost insensate, another arm cupping around his waist – till Tony had hauled him right up, and pressed him close, dark hair brushing over the tip of Steve’s nose. His voice in Steve’s ear was barely above a whisper, barely a question. Maybe it wasn’t even meant for him. “Why.”

The reactor dug into Steve’s sternum, a circle of glowing warmth. It felt nice.

The world was falling away, breaths slowing and heart drifting to a stop, and it felt nothing like the ice.

“I was looking for a happy ending.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr link [here](https://lazywriter7.tumblr.com/post/184478810691/shades-of-happiness)


End file.
